


Part of the Family

by snowflakeofdestruction



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Lea/Axel's family, M/M, Post-Canon, implied grieving and past deaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 06:20:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29962200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowflakeofdestruction/pseuds/snowflakeofdestruction
Summary: Axel is always telling Roxas his parents would love him, and he seems to mean it, so why hasn't he introduced them?
Relationships: Axel/Roxas (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	Part of the Family

“Dad would love you,” Axel declares one afternoon without preamble or prompting. They’re in the Radiant Garden waterways, heading back from another trip to the remains of the dungeons, getting lost despite having made the trip before and Axel’s denials to the contrary.

Roxas’ clothes are damp and dirty, there’s a crick in his neck still from having been hunched over books in Ansem’s sprawling labyrinth of a library with Axel and Isa until his eyes burned and Axel had dragged him on a jaunt to the dungeons (The waterway dungeons at least, the laboratories elsewhere also held containment cells and outright cages that made Roxas wonder where the line for categorization was drawn, as well as why anyone allowed Ansem the Wise to pretend for more than a second now that his scientific studies had been anything resembling noble before Xehanort showed up and “corrupted” them, as if there hadn’t been rot and darkness spreading long before) to stretch their legs and makeout against walls, his hair is sticking up in odd angles from damp and fingers run through it. He’s tired. He’s disgruntled and discouraged despite recent distractions that they haven’t been able to find any record of existence of Axel and Isa’s old friend. He’s been expressing his mood primarily through mumbled cursing. There’s an ugly blue and purple bruise developing under his right eye from being hit with a Defender’s shield, and, even if the next cure spell cast should take care of that at least, Roxas hardly feels like he comes across as lovable. Maybe-hopefully–Axel still loves him, but certainly he’s not exactly painting an endearing picture for anyone else. There’s not a trace of irony or mockery in Axel’s words though, and he’s not usually subtle when he’s making fun.

Roxas has already stepped into a nearby bubble and is carried away before he can ask Axel, “How do you figure?” and actually have him hear it, but Axel is right behind him, and when they are reunited again in another near featureless stony gully with waterfalls moving the wrong way, Axel answers without missing a beat, like he sensed Roxas’s question in a fleeting expression before he disappeared or they have bonded beyond the need for physical speech.

“He admired passion,” Axel explains. “He was pretty laid back himself. I guess I take after him in some ways,” the realization verges on melancholy, “Except I’m not as good at knowing exactly what to say to diffuse situations. He was a born peacemaker. I’m more of a… “ He trails off, knowing better than to start the argument or chain of reassurances that would be triggered by reflecting that he’s more a weapon, sharply honed and unperturbed and so better able to be used against those who lose their ability to think clearly when clouded with turbulent emotion. Roxas knows the unsaid anyway, but holds his tongue, opting instead to just shake his head and twine his fingers possessively in the notches between Axel’s own as if reiterating that they will–they _have_ and Axel started even without him–pull each other into a better life than that. 

“Well, anyway, he was a peacemaker, but not someone who believed there shouldn’t be conflict. He liked people that spoke their minds. Passionate. Opinionated. Fiery.” Axel laughs at his own word choice as more words fight to tumble out now that he’s started. “He had a predilection for fire magic. He’s the one that taught me, but he wasn’t hot tempered. He was warmth and light. He enveloped anyone he met, but he’d especially love you. He’d see _I_ love you and you love me, and he wouldn’t need anything else to be on your side forever and support anything you ranted about or set your mind to.”

“He sounds nice,” Roxas replies and wonders not for the first time why he hasn’t met Axel’s parents yet. He forgets to ask. He doesn’t think much about families usually, ones people are born into at least. Axel and Xion are family. Sora is family, and Roxas long ago stopped trying to deny it. Even Isa is…getting there. Someday. Maybe. Roxas has a hard time remembering and keeping it in his mind that some people–most people, _normal_ people–have more than that.

“He has the biggest heart I know,” Axel says that and no more. 

Roxas has questions, but the sudden way Axel cuts himself off makes him reluctant to ask.

They find their way back to the castle and to town, and Roxas forgets.

“My mother makes the best honey wheat bread,” Axel says a few months later. Roxas tells him to ask her for the recipe.

* * *

“My father read that book.”

“I have the sequel. Do you want to send it to him?”

* * *

“You are exactly the type of partner my mother always wanted for me.”

“Someone that puts up with your bullshit?”

“Someone who brings out the best in me.”

* * *

“You’d make my mother laugh. You have the same sense of humor.”

* * *

“They’d love you like I love you.”

“Hopefully not _just_ like.”

“They’d want you as another son.”

“Do you?”

“Want you as my son? I think that would be inappropriate.”

“Want to be a family forever?”

“I do.”

* * *

There are two empty seats saved in the front row of the ceremony. Roxas understands now. Radiant Garden may look like its returned to its former glory if you stay in town, ignoring the Great Maw, Villain’s Vale, the waterways, or other ruins and secret corners where Heartless run rampant and destruction and scars remain, but it’s not as simple as all that. Roxas had worked alongside the Radiant Garden Restoration Committee, like so many other of the Guardians had, but the meaning of it hadn’t sunk in for the longest time. 

Radiant Garden had fallen and been twisted into Hollow Bastion, then it had been redeemed, but it had never been consumed completely, a star winked out, and so the star hadn’t been fully reborn either. It didn’t seem fair. They could keep slaying Heartless and Nobodies and hope to see new recompletions (A task that Roxas had mixed feelings over that he didn’t always feel comfortable sharing, knowing his unique perspective on reunion of Nobody into the whole was one few people understood, despite saying they did in the moment before dismissing Roxas and Naminé as special cases). They could take the extremist approach and advocate for unlocking Radiant Garden’s heart and leading Heartless there in the hopes a new world and all its people would come back once the cycle of Dark had been fulfilled. There were no guarantees. 

Axel’s parents, like Cloud’s mother or Leon’s first love, Rinoa, or so many others Roxas had never and would never meet, were gone.

“I’d love your parents.”

“And they’d adore you, Roxas.”


End file.
